SingStar: Past, Present and Future

Of course there are additional complications. If there's a shot of someone holding a knife in the video, for instance, that could affect the PEGI rating, so the video has to be edited. "For [another] example, you may find you get an eighties pop song, and with the videos in the eighties, they loved making them a bit like films, so what you'd find is that in the music for the video they'd put in an extra four bars in the middle because there's a scene that's like waving goodbye on a platform or something, and then you get the CD bit and it doesn't match up." And of course every time someone edits something, that means seeking re-approval from the rights-holders. Still, at least the process is the same for discs and Store downloads.

And at least it doesn't get them down, perhaps because every Friday afternoon they have SingStar parties in the office (I thought we invented that), or perhaps because they always have the option, slumped on the sofa on a Sunday morning, of firing up the SingStar community pages and watching the surprisingly amazing videos that fans of the game concoct. It's the new Hollyoaks Omnibus. What's more, Ranyard reckons the community pretty much polices itself.

"People can grief-report, but to be honest I don't think there's that much moderation goes on," he says. "I think there was a little bit in the early days, because people didn't really know. It was nothing like malicious, it was more naive, and it's not like every day I get emails like, 'Oh god, this is happening', so I don't know how it is moderated. It's certainly not a big topic for us." They even have nice comments threads apparently. Imagine! Ranyard speculates that it's because people are comfy in the walled garden that is SingStar online, and support one another rather than fighting.

"And you're right, I love watching it too," he admits, although with three kids his Sundays probably don't involve many hangovers and Hollyoaks anyway. "We've given them one editing function, which is the pause button, and yet they've done some amazing videos. That's kind of what I'm getting at when I say that we look at the community and that informs us as to where to go." He doesn't want to comment on whether full-length video recordings will be introduced in a future round of updates, which probably means they will be.

One feature we would all like to see, though, isn't really up to Ranyard and his colleagues at Sony, and that's only having to buy a song you like once. At the moment, anyone who fancies a bit of "Mr. Brightside" in SingStar and Rock Band has to fork out twice, and again if they want it on CD (although you know, it's a bit old now - buy Day & Age instead). Are we ever going to get to a point where it's just one, sensible price for an all-access pace?

"That's a really tough question. I do know what you mean from a consumer perspective. At the end of the day I'm a consumer as well," he says, before pausing. "We could get there. Maybe that's more of an initiative for the music industry." So, er, probably not, then. Given the music industry's attitude to evolving technologies like the internet in the late nineties, and even now, it's hard to imagine them not wanting us to buy everything multiple times.

Then again, Ranyard has to work with people in the music industry, so he's not about to slag them off, and points out that while the number of competing music games sometimes means paying out too often for the same thing, it has its upsides too. "If you look at the music industry," he notes, "games has been quite a big positive impact on their finances in the last couple of years. Yes, obviously there's competition for content on the one hand, but the other side of it is that the music industry takes us very seriously now, so that makes it easier and smoothes things out. The fact that there's a healthy market there helps us a lot."

And hey, we've got wireless microphones now, and they can't take that away from us.